For a brief space Bob Steele and Cassidy stood looking down at the prostrate form crumpled at their feet. The captain had been stricken so suddenly that they were astounded.
Cassidy took a look through the periscope and lashed the wheel; then he hurried to help Bob, who was lifting the unconscious man to a long locker at the side of the room.
“He ain’t never been right since he was sick in New Orleans,” muttered Cassidy. “He jumped into work before he was well enough.”
The captain’s former illness had been of a peculiar nature. An idol’s head, steeped in some noxious liquor that caused the head to give off a deadly odor, was, according to his firm belief, the cause of his sickness. Carl had also come under the influence of the poisonous odor, but it had had no such effect upon him. However, no two persons are exactly alike, and sometimes a thing that will work havoc with one may have no effect upon another.
“His heart action is good, Cassidy,” said Bob.
“He’s a sick man for all that,” replied the mate. “I’ve noticed for several hours he was nervous like. We’ll have to take him ashore at Belize, and you’ll have to be the captain while we’re doing the work that’s to be done.”
There was an under note in Cassidy’s voice that caused Bob to give him a keen look. The mate was a good fellow, but he was second in command, aboard theGrampus, and it was quite natural for him to expect to be the one who stepped into the captain’s shoes.
“You heard what Captain Nemo, junior, said?” asked Bob.
“Sure, I did,” returned the mate gruffly.
“I had not the least notion he was picking me for any such place.”
“He’s a queer chap, the cap’n is,” said Cassidy, averting his face and getting up from the side of the locker. “I’ll go get him a swig of brandy—maybe it’ll bring him round.”
When Cassidy returned from the storeroom with the brandy flask, Bob could hardly avoid detecting that he had himself sampled the liquor. Bob was disagreeably surprised, for he had not known that the mate was a drinking man.
While they were forcing a little of the brandy down the captain’s throat, Dick and Carl came into the periscope room.
“Vat’s der madder mit der gaptain?” asked Carl, as he and Dick crowded close to the locker.
Bob told of the illness that had so suddenly overtaken the master of the submarine.
“Well, that’s queer!” exclaimed Dick.
“For the last hour,” went on Bob, “the captain’s hands have been like ice and his face pale. I knew he didn’t feel well, but I hadn’t any idea he was as bad as this.”
“Tough luck!” growled Cassidy.
“Shall we need a pilot to take us into Belize?” asked Bob.
“We can’t get very close to the town, but will have to lay off and go ashore in a boat. I know the place well enough to take theGrampusto a safe berth.”
“Then you’d better go up in the lookout, Cassidy, and see to laying us alongside the town.”
A mutinous look flickered for an instant on Cassidy’s weather-beaten face. He hesitated, and then,without a word, turned away and climbed into the conning tower.
A moment more and the captain revived and opened his eyes.
“How are you feeling, sir?” queried Bob.
“Far from well, my lad,” was the answer, in a weak voice. “Are we off Belize?”
“Not yet, sir, but we are drawing close.”
“We are close enough so that we can read the second half of our sealed orders.”
The captain lifted a hand and removed from the breast pocket of his coat a sealed envelope, which he handed to Bob.
“Open it, Bob,” said he, “and read it aloud.”
The young motorist paused. “Captain,” said he, “wouldn’t Cassidy be the right man for carrying out the work that brought us into these waters? He is the mate, you know, and I think he expects——”
“Cassidy is here to obey orders,” interrupted the captain. “Cassidy has a failing, and that failing is drink. No man that takes liquor is ever to be depended on. As long as I’m around, and can watch him, Cassidy keeps pretty straight, but if I’m laid up at Belize, as I expect to be, I prefer to have some one in command of theGrampuswhom I can trust implicitly. Read the orders.”
Bob tore open the envelope and removed the inclosed sheet.
“On Board U. S. CruiserSeminole, at Sea.“Captain Nemo, Junior, SubmarineGrampus.“Sir: Acting under orders from the secretary of the navy, I have the honor to request that theGrampuslend her aid to the rescue of United States Consul Jeremiah Coleman, who has been sequestered by Central American revolutionists, presumably under ordersfrom Captain James Sixty, of the brigDolphin, who is now a prisoner in our hands. Mr. Hays Jordan, the United States consul at Belize, will inform you as to the place where Mr. Coleman is being held. This is somewhere up the Rio Dolce, in a place inaccessible even to gunboats of the lightest draft, and it is hoped theGrampusmay be able to accomplish something. Present this letter to Mr. Jordan immediately upon reaching Belize, and be guided in whatever you do by his knowledge and judgment. I have the honor to remain, sir, your most obedient,“Arthur Wynekoop,“Captain CruiserSeminole.”
“On Board U. S. CruiserSeminole, at Sea.
“Captain Nemo, Junior, SubmarineGrampus.
“Sir: Acting under orders from the secretary of the navy, I have the honor to request that theGrampuslend her aid to the rescue of United States Consul Jeremiah Coleman, who has been sequestered by Central American revolutionists, presumably under ordersfrom Captain James Sixty, of the brigDolphin, who is now a prisoner in our hands. Mr. Hays Jordan, the United States consul at Belize, will inform you as to the place where Mr. Coleman is being held. This is somewhere up the Rio Dolce, in a place inaccessible even to gunboats of the lightest draft, and it is hoped theGrampusmay be able to accomplish something. Present this letter to Mr. Jordan immediately upon reaching Belize, and be guided in whatever you do by his knowledge and judgment. I have the honor to remain, sir, your most obedient,
“Arthur Wynekoop,
“Captain CruiserSeminole.”
A movement behind Bob caused him to look around. Cassidy had descended quietly from the conning tower and was steering the ship entirely by the periscope.
“We are off Belize, sir,” announced Cassidy, “and two small sailboats are coming this way. We are to anchor at the surface, I suppose?”
Bob did not know how long the mate had been in the periscope room, but supposed he had been there long enough to overhear the instructions.
“Certainly,” said the captain.
Cassidy touched a jingler connected with the engine room. The hum of the motor slowly ceased.
“Get out an anchor fore-and-aft, Speake,” the mate called through one of the speaking tubes.
“Aye, aye, sir,” came the response through the tube.
A little later a muffled rattling could be heard as a chain was paid out through the patent water-tight hawse hole. Presently the rattling stopped, and theGrampusshivered and swung to her scope of cable. More rattling came from the stern, and soon two anchors were holding the submarine steady in her berth.
“I want you to go ashore, Bob,” said Captain Nemo,junior, “and see the American consul. Find a place where I can be taken care of; also, show that letter to the consul and tell him you are my representative. Better take Dick with you.”
“All right, sir,” replied Bob.
A blueish tinge had crept into the pallor of the captain’s face. Bob had been covertly watching, and his anxiety on the captain’s account had increased. The captain must be taken ashore as quickly as possible and placed in a doctor’s hands.
“Come on, Dick,” called Bob, starting up the conning-tower ladder.
With his chum at his heels, Bob crawled over the rim of the conning-tower hatch and lowered himself to the rounded steel deck.
The port of Belize, nestling in a tropical bower of coconut trees, was about a mile distant. Owing to her light draft, theGrampushad been able to come closer to the town than other ships in the harbor. The submarine lay between a number of sailing vessels and steamboats and the line of white buildings peeping out of the greenery beyond the beach.
Two small sailboats, manned by negroes, were approaching theGrampus. Bob motioned to one of them, and her skipper hove-to alongside, caught a rope thrown by Dick, and pulled his craft as near the deck of the submarine as the rounded bulwarks would permit. A plank was pushed over the side of the sailboat, and Bob and Dick climbed over the lifting and shaking board.
“Golly, boss,” remarked the negro, “dat’s de funniest boat dat I ever seen in dis port. Looks like er bar’l on er raft.”
“Never mind that,” said Bob, “but lay us alongside the wharf as soon as you can.”
The two negroes comprising the sailboat’s crew wereCaribs. They talked together in their native tongue, every word seeming to end in “boo” or “boo-hoo.”
“A whoop, two grunts, and a little blubbering,” said Dick, “will give a fellow a pretty fair Carib vocabulary. What ails Cassidy?”
“I think he sampled the flask of brandy when he brought it to the captain,” replied Bob.
“That was plain enough, for he had a breath like a rum cask. But it wasn’t that alone that made him so grouchy. There’s something else at the bottom of his locker.”
“Well, he’s the mate,” went on Bob, dropping his voice and turning a cautious look on the two negroes, “and I suppose he thinks Captain Nemo, junior, ought to have put him in command. To have a fellow like me jumped over his head may have touched him a little.”
“Probably,” murmured Dick, “but it’s a brand-new side of his character Cassidy’s showing. I never suspected it of him. Do you think the captain’s trouble is anything serious?”
“I hope not, Dick, but I’m worried. The sickness came on so suddenly I hardly know what to think.”
“He may have some of the poison from that idol’s head still under his hatches. It’s queer, though, that he should be so long getting over it, when Carl cut himself adrift from the same thing so handsomely.”
“Things of that kind never affect two people in exactly the same way.”
The negroes brought their boat alongside the wharf. As Bob paid for their services, and climbed ashore, Dick called his attention to theGrampus. Cassidy could be seen on the speck of deck running the Stars and Stripes to the top of the short flagstaff. The other sailboat, to the boys’ surprise, was standing in close to the submarine.
Having finished with the flag, Cassidy could be seen to throw a rope to the skipper of the sailboat, and then, a moment later, to spring aboard.
“What does that move mean?” queried Dick.
“Give it up,” answered Bob, with a mystified frown. “Probably we shall know, before long. Just now, though, we’ve got to think of the captain and send off a doctor to theGrampus.”
Turning away, he and Dick walked rapidly to the shore and on into the town.